A bus allegedly brought 30 to 40 people with no ID to a Surrey-Guildford advance poll. A man who says he was scrutineering for NDP candidate Garry Begg says on camera he paired voters without ID with voters who had it.

It is after dark outside Holly Elementary in Surrey, a voting place for the Surrey-Guildford advance poll. A man with a phone is questioning people in the parking lot about a group of voters, and one of them says he knows those voters. “Because Gary Begg was an MLA, they have been to their events.” he is heard to say. “They have come to Gary Begg’s barbecue events.” Asked what his role is, a man answers: “I am scrutinizing.” The man filming asks, “Scrutinizing for NDP?” The answer: “Yeah, for Gary Begg.”^1,2,3

“And you are telling them to vote for NDP?” the man filming asks. “No, I told them to pair, because I know them, I told them those who have ID, pair with those who do not have ID.” comes the reply. “Just go inside and vote for whoever you want.”²

Garry Begg is the NDP MLA for Surrey-Guildford and the party’s candidate on Saturday. He held the seat in 2024 by 22 votes, after a judicial recount, and that seat settled the NDP’s majority. The man on camera is not named, and nothing but his own words links him to Begg’s campaign. What he describes is organising voters without identification to vote alongside voters who have it.^4,5,6

B.C. law allows a voter with no ID to vote if another voter vouches for them, one voter per voucher, under a sworn declaration of who that person is and where they live. A candidate’s scrutineer is there to observe the voting, not to run it. Close seats decide who governs, and the government decides who gets onto the roads, trails and Crown land of the backcountry. Every legitimate vote counts in a seat like this, and so does trust in the count.^7,8,9

By Friday afternoon the BC NDP, Garry Begg and Elections BC had not responded publicly to the videos that we could find. No mainstream outlet had reported them; Juno News and Rebel News had.^10,11,12

01 A man says on camera he was scrutineering for Garry Begg and told voters without ID to pair with voters who had ID. He denies telling them how to vote.

In part 2, posted seconds before part 3, a man describes how it was done: “I asked them how can we help them vote and he told me carry those who have ID with those who do not have ID.” Then: “I brought them outside.” He does not say who “he” was. The man filming answers that the voters told him otherwise: “you told them to vote for the candidate.” The reply: “I did not say such a thing.”²

So the account on camera has two halves. A man who says he was scrutineering for Begg says he organised voters with ID to pair with voters without it, and denies telling anyone how to vote. The man filming says the voters told him they had been told to vote for the candidate. None of the voters is heard on camera, and the man filming is the only source for what they said.

02 Pairing one voter with ID to one without fits B.C.’s limit of one voter per voucher. But each voucher must swear to who the voter is, and a scrutineer is there to observe.

Pairing one voter with ID to one without, as the man describes it, fits the count: one voucher, one voter. Elections BC says the same: “A voucher who is not the voter’s relative or personal care authority may only vouch for one voter.” If 30 to 40 people had no ID, it would take 30 to 40 vouchers.⁸

The count is not the only rule. Each voucher must be a registered voter in the other person’s riding, must show ID, and must swear in writing to that person’s identity and address. A voucher who swears to the identity and address of someone they were paired with outside, and do not know, risks a false declaration under section 266: up to $20,000, two years in prison, or both. Whether any voucher that night could truthfully swear to the person beside them is the question only the declarations can answer.^7,14

And a scrutineer has a defined job. The Act says candidate representatives are appointed “to represent the candidate by observing the conduct of voting, registration at the time of voting and counting proceedings.” They may not help a voter mark a ballot, and nobody may try to influence a voter within 100 metres of the building while voting is under way. Organising voters into vouching pairs at the door goes beyond observing. Whether it broke a rule depends on where it happened and what was said, which is what Elections BC can establish.^9,13

03 The video was first posted on TikTok, tagged at Holly Elementary, a Surrey-Guildford advance voting place. On X it was seen more than 255,000 times.

The earliest copy we found was posted at 10:47 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 October, by a TikTok account with no name that had been created minutes earlier. It carried the location tag “Holly Elementary · Surrey.” Elections BC lists Holly Elementary, at 10719 150 Street, as a Surrey-Guildford advance voting place, open every day from 16 to 21 October until 8 p.m. The filmer’s tag and the official list together make it very likely that the videos were shot at that provincial advance poll, most likely on the evening of 20 October. Surrey’s municipal voting had ended on 17 October.^1,3,17,18

The account posted four parts. Part 1, the clip that went viral, had 97,000 plays by Friday. In it, a man in a navy jacket explains to the man filming that voters with no ID can be vouched for: “The voucher has the proof. The vouchee can have nothing.” The account later replied to a viewer: “The guy explaining is working for election BC.” We could not confirm that, and Elections BC has not said. His account of vouching is accurate as far as it goes; he does not mention the one-voter limit.^1,19

Part 4, posted the next night, is 13 seconds: a gym with voting tables, then a yellow school-type bus and a red mini-bus at dusk, captioned “NDP volunteers brought a bus and a van full of people without identification and paired them up with the person who can vouch for.” The vehicles carry no markings we could read, and nothing in it names the place. The original post also names a recovery facility near the school as the bus’s origin; we have not confirmed that any voter came from there, and we are not naming it, to protect its residents.¹

Wall Street Apes, an account on X with about 1.4 million followers, posted part 1 at 8:41 p.m. on 21 October under the line “The Left won’t stop stealing elections,” with the TikTok’s words: “He was asking them vote for the New Democratic Party in front of the booth which is illegal.” It had been viewed more than 255,000 times by Friday. The Shift reposted it on Instagram the next morning with its own introduction, and Juno News reported on Friday that “a speaker claims that approximately 40 people arrived on an addiction treatment centre bus.”^11,20,21

04 A second reel asks whether people in B.C. can vote “under oath” with no ID. Only with a voucher who swears too, and a false declaration carries up to two years in prison.

On Friday The Loonie Hour, an Instagram account with about 5,200 followers, posted its own take: “Video in BC goes viral regarding voting under oath.” One host describes a man who “comes to the voting station with a busload of 40 people,” and says “the guy at the voting station” answered that “they can just make an oath.” The other asks: “is there anyone to audit all the oaths?”²²

An oath alone is not enough. Every voter who takes a ballot must “make a written declaration that the individual is entitled to vote in the election,” with or without ID, and a voter with no documents must also be vouched for. Both sign a solemn declaration, which the Act says is made on oath or by solemn affirmation, before an election official, who must first tell both of them the rules and the penalties. To the host’s question, the audit is those signed declarations, and Elections BC is the body that can check them.^7,14

05 Each allegation, set against the law it would break. These are serious claims, and the people who can answer them have not.

If voters were told at the door how to vote, or vouched for by people who could not truthfully swear to who they were, that is conduct the Election Act forbids, and the penalties run to prison and a ban from voting. None of it has yet been answered by the people who could settle it. The filmer has the full footage. Elections BC holds the vouching declarations. The BC NDP and Garry Begg can say whether the man was their scrutineer.^{5,7,9,13,14,15,16}

06 Surrey-Guildford’s 2024 result was challenged over votes from a recovery lodge. Elections BC found possible non-compliance in some cases, but no deliberate attempt to break the Act.

The allegations land in a riding with a history. After the 2024 recount, Honveer Singh Randhawa, the Conservative who lost by 22 votes, complained to Elections BC on 3 January 2025 and asked the B.C. Supreme Court to declare the election invalid. His party said votes cast by residents of a licensed addiction recovery lodge in the riding were improper; the lodge’s manager said “There’s no truth to the matter”^5,6,23

He discontinued the petition on 23 December 2025. On 29 May 2026 Elections BC published a summary of its investigation. It found that “The evidence available was sufficient to assess the allegations and determine there was no deliberate attempt to influence the election outcome through non-compliance with the Election Act.” In some cases it found possible non-compliance that did not meet the standard for prosecution or was procedural, and it sent letters to 12 people explaining the rules. It also said it was publishing the summary because of “the false narratives that have circulated regarding this issue.”⁶

Two years on, a claim about vulnerable adults being brought to vote in the same riding needs the same scrutiny, and a public answer.

07 The BC NDP, Garry Begg and Elections BC have not responded publicly that we could find. Anyone who saw it can report it to Elections BC in writing.

By Friday afternoon we found no public statement on the videos from the BC NDP, whose media centre had no release on them, from Garry Begg, or from Elections BC, whose latest news item was its reminder about Final Voting Day. We found none from the other candidates or the police either. Rebel News reported that “video surfaced of an NDP volunteer allegedly bringing a busload of 30 to 40 people with no ID to a Surrey-Guildford polling station.” We could not read X, Facebook or TikTok search without signing in, so a response posted only there may have been missed.^10,12,24

Four candidates are on the ballot in Surrey-Guildford: Garry Begg of the BC NDP; Garry Thind, the Conservative candidate and a Surrey school trustee; Jodi Murphy of the BC Green Party; and James Yaroshuk, who is running unaffiliated. We set out where Begg and Thind stand in our comparison of the riding.^4,25

Elections BC asks for complaints in writing to investigations@elections.bc.ca, or by mail to PO Box 9275 Stn Prov Govt, Victoria. It wants a factual description with the dates, times and place, the sections of the Act that may have been breached, and copies of any video or screenshots. A complaint with the full footage would let investigators check the vouching declarations signed at Holly Elementary. Elections BC’s own policy is that “We will confirm if we have received a complaint on a potential issue of non-compliance.” Candidates, parties and voters can ask it.^26,27

08 In our view, a seat decided by 22 votes deserves an answer. The BC NDP and Garry Begg should say whether this man was their scrutineer, and Elections BC whether it is looking.

A man who says he was scrutineering for the NDP candidate says on camera that he paired voters without ID with voters who had it. The law lets that happen one voter at a time, under oath, by vouchers who can swear to who the voter is and where they live. It does not let anyone tell those voters, at the door, how to vote.^2,7,13

Every eligible voter, including people in recovery, has the right to vote, and every voter is entitled to a count they can trust. A seat won by 22 votes helped decide who governed B.C. for two years, and so who decided which roads stayed open, which trails were funded and who got onto Crown land.⁵

Vouching works one voter at a time, under oath. The BC NDP and Garry Begg should say who their scrutineer at Holly Elementary was and what he did.

If you saw it, report it to Elections BC with what you saw, where and when. Then vote: Final Voting Day is scheduled for Saturday, 24 October.^26,28